As quickly and quietly as she could manage, they stole toward the nearest side entrance of the palace. Taking a note from the now-dead Lydoceous’ playbook, the blade used False Image to blur her outline, making her all but invisible as she moved around, tightening the noose that was the guard patrols.

-5 Life Force.

The blade could have slaughtered any of them. It could have done so easily. It even wanted to do just that, and yet it resisted. Right now, they were operating on someone’s orders. Someone had felt a death within the walls of this place, but until they found the body with its freeze-dried wound or the slaughter began, they didn’t know precisely what had happened.

No one would cause a panic with guests this important, it told itself as they stole silently toward their destination. Not when being wrong would mean a banishment, at the very least.

They’d stuffed the man into their carriage before they set off, so the guard’s job was not an easy one. The Ebon Blade and its wielder would have several minutes before they found the dead mage, and by then, more people would probably already be bleeding out as well.

As they approached the door as little more than a shadow in the darkness, instead of killing the two men standing there with halberds in the torchlight, Evelyn leaped toward the widows on the second floor and then opened one of those. While the blade needed to kill someone to get more information about the keep’s layout, there would be plenty of death soon.

Still, somehow, in room after room and hallway after hallway, they managed to avoid the guards as they crept closer to the throne room. This pleased the blade. What will we face when we reach the throne itself? It asked its wielder as they moved ever closer to the goal.

My father’s honor guard, at a minimum, she answered. Along with whatever defenses the throne itself has. They are powerful warriors in golden armor. Even as a girl, though, I’ve never seen them speak.

That concerned the blade but not as much as the large door that it found shut. It had expected to cut a bloody path through a small army. It had expected mages to rain fire on it again, but what it had found was only a single locked door.

The blade probed it and didn’t find it to be especially magical. So, at its command, its wielder unsheathed it, then with the unmistakable sound of smashing wood echoing down the dark corridor through which they’d just come, she struck at the joint between the doors with all her might.

The moment they forced open the door with a shower of sparks and moved into the throne room, the blade activated Aethersight to see what it was they were going to be dealing with, and it was almost immediately blinded. The walls, floor, and doors glowed. The knights defending the King glowed brighter than them, but all of those things, even the bright knight at the center of the formation, were washed out by the glow of the throne. Only the man that sat upon it cast no light; he existed almost as a hole that the light flowed into.

-1 Life Force.

The Ebon Blade could really only make sense of what it was seeing as the image began to fade, but that was enough. The throne was not just what it was seeing here. Its roots, physical or magical, descended deep into the stone of this fortress.

Those images concerned the blade enough to tighten its wielder's grip on its hilt, but it said nothing as she strode into the room unopposed and looked up at her father. The blade would have thought that this place would have been overflowing with defenses, but instead, it found the vast, ostentatious hall to be nearly empty.

“Hello, father,” she called out. “I’ve put an end to the awful husband you shackled me to, and now, for the good of everyone, I’ve come to pay you a little visit.”

The King turned to face her, but he didn’t seem overly concerned, which didn’t seem quite right for a man who wanted to live forever. He was a handsome elderly man with close groped gray hair and a well-lined face. He actually smiled slowly when he saw who his executioner was, to be, but the blade looked past that to the throne itself.

The golden thing was a massive thing that dwarfed the man. Its back was nearly ten feet tall and made as a replica of the fort that it sat within. It was as opulent as anything the blade had ever seen, and it wouldn’t have cared about the garish thing at all if not for the power that surged through it.

“Using my own daughter against me, are you Baraga?” the King said, “I should have expected that from an angry ghost like you who’d never gotten over my first daughter.”

The withered old King did not raise his voice, yet he still sounded quite loud as he sat there, thanks to a trick of the architecture. That was less unnerving than the fact that the man seemed utterly unconcerned. There were only five knights between him and the blade. Four of them were six feet tall, or a little over clad in gold armor, and the one in the center, at close to eight feet tall, towered over the rest.

“The weapon isn’t controlling me, Father,” Evelyn declared. “It is my ally, and you are my enemy. You’re the enemy of everyone in the Inner Kingdoms as well as those beyond. A life this long isn’t natural!”

“Unnatural but necessary,” the King boomed. “The world is wild and full of monsters. It requires a monster not just to defend it but to yoke those monsters to the common good whenever possible!”

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

That statement stung the blade. Just like you did to me, it whispered.

“Perhaps,” she answered, less sure. “But your time is at an end, and all of us will have to see what it is that the world looks like without you.”

As they spoke, Evelyn continued to stride toward her foes, and after a few seconds, the knights did likewise. At least four of them did. The four clad in gold moved toward her, fanning out as they went, while the one in black stood there wordlessly as the King’s final line of defense.

She unsheathed it then, dashing toward the nearest foe with an intent to take it out before the other three could close. It was a smart move, and the blade approved it, but neither of her two lightning-fast feints found an opening, and when she tried to push through for a vital thrust anyway, she only got a deep cut on the left side of her neck for her trouble, momentarily severing one of her jugglers.

-18 Life Force.

That healed instantly. What was far more disturbing was that the joint she’d thrust through in the golden plate mailed warrior found only empty air. Even as the blade wondered at how armor might be animate without someone to wear it, though, the battle was joined.

Don’t strike the men inside the armor, The weapon commanded. Strike the armor itself. Batter and break it.

Its wielder did just that, knocking off helmets and arms as the four not-men circled and struck her with precision. Still, no matter what damage she did, it didn’t seem to matter. Even pieces of golden Plate mail knocked halfway across the room were glided back, rejoining the men until they were whole once more.

-22 Life Force.

“See?” the King’s voice boomed. “Had we not captured and studied the Doll, we would never have learned how to bend similar magic to create our deathless defenders.”

The Doll? The blade wondered, searching its memory for what that familiar phrase might refer to or where it had heard it.

As it considered that, the battle intensified, and after only a few seconds, the fighting was fast and furious, which both delighted and frustrated the weapon. On any other day, it would have longed for a fight like this. Its bloodless opponents seemed to be little more than animate armor, but they fought singly and in pairs with polished perfection. Often as not, they managed to injure its wielder, no matter how perfect or in sync their movements were.

-31 Life Force.

All of that was enjoyable; it was only the fact that none of them seemed to be able to die that frustrated it. That frustration only lasted as long as it took to try using Disrupt. As soon as that happened, the first one fell to pieces.

-50 Life Force.

Your opponent's magic has been temporarily nullified!

That’s it. The weapon whispered to itself as it realized where it had heard of the Doll before. She was supposed to be a minor artifact. Still, even if that was the case, it didn’t seem to be enough to stop it anymore. It’s the magic that powers them that’s their weakness.

-50 Life Force.

Your opponent's magic has been temporarily nullified!

The Ebon Blade did not have infinite resources, and the spell was expensive. Worse, each set of armor that fell apart started to slowly put itself back together on the floor, meaning even its magic wasn’t a complete solution. Still, it was all it had, and it took apart the force that opposed it, even as it pressed toward the throne and the old man that sat upon it once more.

-24 Life Force.

There were three knights remaining and then two. Finally, the only one that remained was the one that stood at the base of the throne’s dais. It hadn’t participated in the fight up until this moment. It merely stood there, resting the head of its giant warhammer on the ground in front of it as it stood at attention.

-100 Life Force.

Both of your opponents’ magic has been temporarily nullified!

Its size and its motionlessness weren’t the only thing that differentiated it. Unlike the other knights, who had worn polished, gilded armor, it was painted black, and the blade only noticed the rivets that bolted the armor to whatever poor bastard happened to be inside it when the gap was nearly closed. Then, it sprang to life with a strength and speed that was inhuman, sending its hammer toward its wielder in a wide but unerring arc.

Evelyn didn’t have time to react. She barely had time to register the motion, but even as she flinched, the blade was already moving. It ducked, tumbling into a roll that went just under the strike. That was the good news. The bad news was, as the blade tried to use Disrupt again, it received an unwelcome message.

-50 Life Force.

Disruption failed! Unable to nullify artifact-level magic with failure.

Artifact level? Is that the Doll he was speaking of? It wondered as it thrust into the opponent through a joint in their armor. What is it I’m fighting here? It didn’t seem likely. The Doll was supposed to be a fragile thing whose only real powers lay in deathlessness and durability.

Something about it is different, the blade noted. Compared to everything else in here this one can bleed.

+34 Life Force.

That news was bad enough, but even worse news followed swiftly. Rather than stop its blow and attempt to defend itself now that the blade was inside its guard, it continued it, pivoting on its heel, and as Evelyn rose to her feet, it came around with a second strike after a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree spin.

The result was devastating. She held her arm up to parry the weapon, and all the inhuman strength that the blade had to give her power that defense, but even so, the warrior they faced hammed trite through it, sending her soaring through the air of the grand gallery-like a broken doll.

-222 Life Force.

The blade barely had time to take in the fact that they were going to be launched right out the giant stained-glass windows that overlooked the palace below as it took in the damage. Var-gar had been hurt worse than this when the mages had burned him almost to the bones, but even so, its wielder’s body had been pulped by a single blow. Her organs were ruptured, her arms broken, her spine fractured, and her ribs shattered. Even her heart had been stopped.

-194 Life Force.

She was dead, and the only reason she wasn’t that way permanently was because the force of the blow had buried its blade edgewise through three ribs and her clavicle. Those terrible wounds were only exacerbated as she shattered the window and was flung out into the courtyard two stories below, where she landed amidst screaming party guests who scattered at the tinkling sounds of glass shards and the wet thud of her broken body as it limply impacted the stone patio.

-207 Life Force.